


The Cat Did Nothing in the Night-Time

by hedda62



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Excessive Use of Landscape and Feline Metaphor, Featuring Bonnie the Cat, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-26
Updated: 2012-08-26
Packaged: 2017-11-12 22:43:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/496467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hedda62/pseuds/hedda62
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"Why did you get a cat?" he complains to the room at large, as if it had been scouring animal shelters and listings of unwanted kittens in John's place.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>"I suppose I must have missed you," John says.</i>
</p><p>Sequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/491465">Improbability</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Cat Did Nothing in the Night-Time

The violin yowls and whinges across the length and breadth of the flat, and out the still-to-be-repaired window into the cool evening air. Sherlock closes his eyes and leans into the music.

John watches him, thinking that he's never more annoying than on the rare occasions when he looks soulful. It's a mazurka he's playing; John now knows how he recognized the slow dancy rhythms of his hallucinations, in those terrible months after Sherlock died. The first time. There's going to be another, if he doesn't stop this noise soon.

Bonnie saves John from the indelible stain of murder. She's been stalking Sherlock from the second he started producing squeals and howls... actually, she's been stalking him since she recovered from yesterday's dramatic return, when he startled her by rushing in at the door and being unfamiliar and causing the windows to explode, but up till now she hasn't looked serious about it, more the sort of casual no-particular-reason-I'm-here think-I'll-stop-and-clean-my-paw stalking that cats adopt to avoid embarrassment. Now it's gazelles-on-the-Serengeti time.

She pounces, the claws sink into Sherlock's calf, and the violin makes a horrible squawking noise and nearly flies out of its torturer's grip. _Oh, well played,_ thinks John, and manages to confine his reaction to a quirk of the lip and a raised eyebrow.

"Get this ferocious animal off me," Sherlock says between his teeth, but Bonnie has already sashayed away, tail up in triumph. He bends toward her retreating form and viciously saws the strings of the violin; she barely twitches.

He puts the instrument down -- carefully; he's not really angry -- and stalks over to the sofa, letting himself flop down next to John with perfectly controlled abandon. If John had known he was going to be flopped upon, he would have left more room, but Sherlock's been generally cuddly since he came home yesterday morning, not that he would ever be induced to admit as much.

"Why did you get a cat?" he complains to the room at large, as if it had been scouring animal shelters and listings of unwanted kittens in John's place.

"I suppose I must have missed you," John says.

Sherlock asks the question with a fairly obvious pantomime of glancing toward Bonnie, now licking the inside of her left haunch, and then down at himself, and then back at John.

"Self-centered, demanding, mysterious and histrionic. Dominates space all out of proportion to size. Easily bored. Produces irritating noises. Brings home random body parts." He elbows Sherlock. "Sits too close."

"You didn't mind last night."

"I was drunk. And you started it." Not that John had moved away. He's run the gamut of emotions since Sherlock walked in, from that initial storm of fierce joy to justified fury to jealousy and clinginess, helped on by gin and a spectacular Médoc that Sherlock had picked up in his travels: a devastating pairing. Today he's mostly been hung over and fretful. And still furious.

 _Almost three years. Not a bloody word._ That's the essence of it, though he'd managed a good five minutes of variations on the theme yesterday, while still lying on the floor clutching Sherlock long after the armed villains had been arrested in the building across the street. Shaking, poking, abusing and generally manhandling him, and finally starting a wrestling match that he thinks was about to end in an ardent clinch if Lestrade hadn't chosen that moment to knock. He's been wondering ever since if he'd been hallucinating (again) and if not hallucinating is worse.

By now he's decided that he would gladly kiss Sherlock, and more, if it would make him not go away again. And then, in the afterglow, he'll punch him in the face.

"Sex and violence do have a long history of association in our sorry society," Sherlock observes, reading John's mind with his familiar infuriating alacrity.

"Oh, you complete wanker." He sighs. "I have missed you. More fool me." They'd been through the whole "why?" and "how?" and "where?" thing yesterday, with Lestrade in equally insulted yet devoted attendance. Mrs. Hudson is away on her annual holiday, so it will be all to do over again when she returns. It's well and good, of course, that Sherlock sacrificed himself to prevent the three of them from being killed; it's the total post-faked-death silence, the lack of trust, that stings. Not only from Sherlock, but from Mycroft too. John can hardly blame Molly. Though he does anyway.

Sherlock's head is on his shoulder, and he's making a noise that really isn't unlike purring. He's going to turn into a cat right here, right now, and John will be back in that bloody desert, having hallucinations, watching his feline friend pounce on invisible scorpions and lick sand out of his paws, and he'll wake up to find no time has passed since the Day of Lamentation and Hair-Pulling, and Sherlock will be dead all over again. It's unbearable. His inhibitions fly off like little desert bats in the night, and he turns to burrow into the warmth and the reassuringly human body.

Suddenly they're in tune, with the same insane and irresistible idea in their heads, or maybe it's just in his and Sherlock is telepathic or deductive or brilliant at research or making a study of his reactions; he doesn't care. Their mouths meet for a kiss that starts as awkward on John's part and endearingly tentative on Sherlock's, but whatever else Sherlock is, he's a fast learner, and before long John is struggling to catch up. It seems like old times, dinner dates and flowers, or at least takeaway and heads in the fridge, and being shot at and running, running, running. Whatever the reason, he's quickly out of breath.

John suspects that Sherlock and his tongue are deducing the history of his mouth and everything it's been up to in his entire life, or, since that would be boring, just the kissing and sex parts. Which is perfectly fine with him. He's willing to offer any stimulus that keeps Sherlock here, now, and in his present body. Which, his hands inform him, may have been consuming good French wine in quantity, but not much of anything else. He supposes the fattening-up will be his job. That's one way Sherlock is not a cat; Bonnie never misses a feeding and often tries to convince him that he's forgotten one. Presumably Sherlock has been the non-domesticated sort of feline, who catches his own prey or else goes hungry. _I am the cat who walks by himself, and all places are alike to me._

He slides his hands under Sherlock's shirt, and just has time to feel too-prominent ribs and a ridged line on the abdomen before he's pushed away violently and Sherlock is panting, pressed into the corner of the sofa, ready to spring if John makes a move.

"Sorry," John says, putting out a cautious, calming hand; it's the same gesture he'd make to an injured animal, and he experiences nearly the same fear of having his fingers bitten off. "Was I going too fast for you? Or do you not want me knowing you had a stomach wound? Because if we're going through with this" -- and when the hell had that become inevitable? -- "I'll be getting the chance to look at all of your scars. And you at mine. We could go very slowly and tell each other stories about them. Or I could let you explain mine to me, since you will anyway; just try not to be too much of a smartarse about me tripping over Bonnie and falling onto that fake unicorn skull of yours that I have no idea why you have and I should have got rid of years ago."

It's an unexpectedly exciting idea, the telling of scars. Sherlock seems to think so too; his eyes get a little wider and his breath slows, and he reaches for John's hand, then lifts his shirt over his concave belly and places John's palm on the marred flesh. Then he takes his own hand away. And doesn't say a word: no acerbic commentary, no showing off, no challenge, perhaps a unique circumstance in the time they've known each other.

John explores the wound with his fingers and eyes: a diagonal knife slash, poorly sewn up, probably with mending thread in someone's kitchen, the stitches taken out too early. It's pink still, maybe two months old, on its way to healing. Except the upper end, which is warm to the touch and slightly swollen.

"This is infected," he tells Sherlock. "I'm going to put some antibiotic ointment on it now, and tomorrow we'll get you some tablets. How long has it been like this?" Sherlock shrugs, apparently struck dumb by John acting like a doctor. "Well, hold on. Don't go anywhere."

A little mocking smile in response, and John is up and away; he's shaking so hard by the time he reaches the bathroom that he has to sit down on the toilet for a minute before he can rummage for the ointment in a cupboard. Once it's in his hand, he's the doctor again, and he manages to go back out to Sherlock and rub the healing balm into the pale skin with reasonable detachment. He washes his hands and goes back to sit next to his friend. Or whatever he is now. This is decidedly a very bad idea, the sex thing, but it's the only idea John can manage to have at the moment.

Sherlock is sitting up; he hasn't tucked his shirt back in but it's covering him. "Traveling circus," he says, sounding distant and thin, the cry of an eagle on the wind, "full of manufactured curiosities. I exposed the owner's fraud."

"And he stabbed you?"

Sherlock's brow furrows; his gaze grows sharp. "No. The unicorn. Do try to keep up, John."

" _Just_ like old times. How'd you get the scar, then?"

"A little disagreement with a merchant in Ankara. I stole food from him." John raises his eyebrows, and Sherlock adds, "Mycroft was supplying me with funds, but I couldn't always access them when I needed to." He sounds resentful; John wonders how he'd liked depending on the brother he routinely scorns. Or used to. Things might change, in three years.

"Listen," he says. "I want to hear what happened to you. All of it you'll tell me. And" -- _God, you've got me feeling sorry for you again, damn you for being so bloody damaged_ \-- "I'll try to treat your wounds. But you have to understand, I have wounds of my own, that _you_ gave me, and I'm angry--"

"Of course," Sherlock says. "I've been observing your anger since I returned. Eyes, forehead, hands, mouth." His gaze lingers. "Even the--" Fingers to lips, and a gesture toward John's. "That was angry, too. It's surprising how arousing anger can be. Perhaps we could make another trial when we're done discussing your emotions."

 _Wanker._ "And do you understand why I'm angry?"

Sherlock nods, once, abruptly. "Yes. It's a logical outcome of events. I was angry too. At Moriarty."

"And why was that, specifically?"

Sherlock looks at him as if he's mad. "Because he took me away from you."

"Ah." John swallows before he can go on, even while he feels he's being manipulated. "So you found your way back, eventually. Homing instinct. Like a cat."

"Yes. I'm sorry..." And now it's Sherlock's turn to pause; astoundingly, he seems to struggle to find his voice. "I'm sorry I took so long, John."

"Well, at least... I mean, I'm still... but you're... oh, fuck it. Kiss me."

And Sherlock does. It's probably the only time he's done what John tells him, or at least John can't remember any other instance of obedience, not with the distractions and the desperation and the dizziness. This time Sherlock makes no objection to his hands slipping under the shirt, or to the shirt being unbuttoned. He explores this new territory, a familiar country he's walked only in dreams. A hilly landscape. John thinks he could count the ribs by touch with heavy gloves on.

Sherlock reads his mind again. "You know I forget to eat sometimes." He kisses John's throat for thirty seconds or so, probably making a study of blood vessels, or considering vampirism as a hobby, and then adds, "And the cocaine didn't help."

John pulls back. "You've been using again?"

"Not recently. And I won't, now." He laughs into John's collarbone. "Catnip," he says.

"There's some in the cupboard," John says, burying himself in Sherlock's mouth and not turning the word and its referent right side out for some moments. "I'd think I'd be boring," he says then.

"Not now, you're not. We may require an increase in innovation as the relationship progresses. I'll do some reading."

"Thanks very much. And, just so you know, I'm still not gay."

"Mm," is all Sherlock says, and then, minutes afterwards, "Apparently I am."

Probably this is a statement that requires further investigation. Later.

Matters are reaching the point at which one of them should say something about a bed, when they are suddenly and rudely separated by a furry body controlled by a fuzzy mind that has decided against all logic that Sherlock's lap, currently occupied only by Sherlock's own engorged body parts and a foreign hand, is underutilized and available for napping. John isn't quite sure which of the two high-pitched noises is made by Sherlock and which by Bonnie -- he's pretty sure he makes a noise himself, too -- but the next thing he knows, Sherlock is bucking upwards, his own hand is making contact with Bonnie's teeth, and Bonnie is leaping into the air after, it is shortly clear, digging her claws deep into Sherlock for the second time in an hour. Sherlock screeches, Bonnie lands with a thump and hisses, and John can't do anything but fall backwards onto the sofa and laugh hysterically.

"Damn that fucking cat," Sherlock says, lifting up a finger to show John where the blood has soaked through his trousers.

"She's usually a nice cat. When she's not provoked."

"Ha. And why the hell did you call her Bonnie?"

"Because she is. Look at her." Bonnie's still stiff with fright, wild-eyed, needing a gentle hand to smooth down her fur and calm her, but she is a gorgeous beast. "She's my bonnie lass," he says in a vaguely Scottish accent. "Aren't you, love?"

"Hm." Sherlock gazes at the cat, and then at John, reaching out a finger -- not the bloody one -- to trace the line of his jaw. Then he starts to whistle. _My Bonnie lies over the ocean, my Bonnie lies over the sea..._

He breaks off the tune and asks, "Did you know?" with amazing gentleness.

"No. Of course not. I knew Mycroft was hiding something, but I'm not you; I couldn't deduce what it was. I was sure you were dead. But I never stopped hoping you weren't."

Sherlock nods, slowly. "I was so alone," he says, "and I owe you so much."

John is staggered at the echo, so distant now, of his own words, the evidence that Sherlock had heard him speak them. "You bastard," he says, choked with fury, and then can't speak any more, because Sherlock is kissing him again. In another lifetime, in no time at all, he realizes that it's not an echo; it's the shout across the valley that starts it all, the end and the beginning and all the heartbreaks in between.

*

They map each other's landscapes thoroughly that night, John managing to diagnose just about all of Sherlock's physical ills and come up with therapies, while Sherlock reads and analyzes the details of three years of John's life. And nearly makes up for his absence during them. Cliffs and the scrambling paths leading up and down, dizzy summits, roaring waterfalls. A stream valley of glacial rock, broken to pebbles by burgeoning growth emerging from the cracks.

John sleeps well, or as well as anyone can next to a twitching mess of odd dream-sentences (he will have to inquire about the meaning of "Give me the hairy lipfern and no one will get hurt") and is shocked awake in combat reflex at oh-dark-thirty to find Sherlock, fully dressed, standing by his bed.

"The game's on, John," he says, all the old pleasure back in his voice. "Get dressed. Lestrade's waiting. I didn't realize he had a key to the flat. He may have seen me come out of your room nearly naked." Sherlock shrugs; John rolls over and groans.

"Wonderful," he says. "And you'd think he'd give you a few days' holiday."

"But it's a very exciting corpse. John," he goes on, nudging and pawing. It's been Bonnie's job, but she's probably convincing Lestrade to feed her breakfast, twice; they're rather fond of each other. "John, wake up."

"I am bloody awake. The corpse can wait five minutes."

He means, while he gets some clothes on and someone makes him coffee, but Sherlock misinterprets for once in his life. "I don't think five minutes is long enough, John. And perhaps I'm wrong" -- as if -- "but I've observed your social inhibition about sexual activity with someone in the next room--"

"No. God. Don't flatter yourself. More than comes naturally." He flings a hand over his eyes, too dramatically, but it is five in the bleeding morning. "Coffee. Go. Now."

Sherlock bends over him, gives him a kiss like a moth alighting on his lips. "I'm happy to be home, John," he says, and John believes him, and then he punches Sherlock in the face, and all is right with the world.


End file.
